Over 700,000 Android Devices Are Activated Each And Every Day

Whether you love it or hate it, there's no denying that Google'sAndroid operating system is incredibly popular right now. So popular, in fact, that the company's senior vice president of mobile, Andy Rubin, has revealed that over 700,000 Android devices are activated each and every day.

What makes that figure even more impressive is that's over 700,000 new devices activated each day — not including devices that may be reactivated for any reason — according to Rubin, who announced the news on Google+:

"There are now over 700,000 Android devices activated every day.

"… and for those wondering, we count each device only once (ie, we don't count re-sold devices), and "activations" means you go into a store, buy a device, put it on the network by subscribing to a wireless service."

Of course, not every one of those 700,000 activations is a new Android customer. Some will be Android users who are upgrading or replacing their existing handsets, or purchasing a second device. However, the Android operating system is most certainly growing at an impressive rate.

In August 2010, only 200,000 Android devices were being activated on a daily basis. By July of this year, that figure had more than doubled to over 500,000 per day, with 130 million Android devices out in the wild, downloading over 6 billion apps from the Android Market. By October 2010, that figured had increased again to 576,900 activations each day, with 190 million Android devices being used.

Just two months later Google is seeing in excess of 700,000 activations each day, with over 10 million apps downloaded from the Android Market. On average, that's 53 apps installed on every Android device. That's a little lower than Apple'siPhone — Android's biggest competitor — which sees 83 apps installed on each device, but those numbers are a fantastic testament to the operating system's incredible growth over the last 18 months.

With those figures in mind, it's no wonder Google chairman Eric Schmidt believes that Android will take over iOS as the first choice for application developers within the next six months.